Big screen’s biggest fan

Love of movies writes the script for Andy Friedenberg and 700 plus in his Cinema Society of San Diego

Andy Friedenberg, director of San Diego Cinema Society, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary poses inside a movie theater at ArcLight in La Jolla, where the society shows their films.
— Crissy Pascual

Andy Friedenberg, director of San Diego Cinema Society, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary poses inside a movie theater at ArcLight in La Jolla, where the society shows their films.
/ Crissy Pascual

When Andy Friedenberg went to the movies as a kid, he went primped and pressed to perfection. His mother would make sure he was all dressed up before they set off into the Detroit night.

“It was an event,” Friedenberg says. “Anybody can go to a movie, but we like to do it a little differently.”

His parents were among the first devoted members of the Cinema Society of San Diego, a film-viewing organization he founded in 1983.

The society started with 30 people meeting at the old Flower Hills Cinema in Del Mar and has grown into a group more than 700 strong celebrating its 30th anniversary this month. It has long outlasted its first home — which is now a Whole Foods Market — to become a beacon of film culture, drawing everyone from Emilio Estevez to Elmo to America’s Finest City.

And it’s all because of Friedenberg.

Ready to join the cast?

For more information about the Cinema Society of San Diego or to purchase a membership, visit cinemasociety.com or call (619) 280-1600.

“Andy is the Cinema Society,” says Jim Manning, a 25-year-plus member of the society. “He loves it. He knows it. You can’t duplicate Andy.”

Friedenberg, 58, spends countless hours screening films, attending festivals and contacting moviemakers to curate an eight-month season of 20 to 30 films that takes members on a journey through film.

After all, this is not a society for the casual blockbuster enthusiast. Everyone is invited to join, but membership is required to attend the group’s screenings, which are always accompanied by a rousing discussion and usually feature a guest intimately involved in the film.

“Many people from San Diego have come here from somewhere else, and they grew up with a love of cinema, at their neighborhood cinema or whatever,” Friedenberg says. “Film is an art form, and people take art very seriously in this community.”

They watch everything: award-winning shorts, documentaries, independent films without distributors and foreign films never before seen in America.

“I think we see an Academy Award nominee every single year,” Manning says. “Andy’s so good at picking out what’s going to make it.”

Creating a classic

Friedenberg’s credentials as a regional marketing director for studios like MGM and Columbia Pictures, a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences give him access to the best of the best, and he’s taken full advantage of his connections to turn the film society into a San Diego cultural icon.

On Tuesday, the Cinema Society will have its first showing at its new home, the ArcLight La Jolla, which Friedenberg calls the “newest state-of-the-art theater in San Diego.” They’ve also expanded into travel, taking yearly trips to locales like New York for the TriBeCa Film Festival and Cuba for a Hispanic cinema tour.

It’s a far cry from the film community Friedenberg was faced with when he first moved out west — “When I got here, I researched the cinema market in San Diego, and it took about five minutes”— and he’ll never forget the day he realized what he’d created.